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“I spend all day being other people,” Nathan Englander told NPR last year. The Brooklyn-based short story writer and novelist was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for his short story collection, What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank with its celebrated title story in which two Jewish couples tentatively bond over pot, dance in the rain, and debate the lengths they’d go to protect their spouses in a second Holocaust. The collection went on to win the 2012 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, confirming the promise of his 1999 debut, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges which scored a PEN/Malamud Award and the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction. Englander changed direction last year with his second novel (now out in paperback), the political thriller,Dinner at the Center of the Earth, in which a Mossad recruit flips for the other side.

Below are Nathan Englander's favorite books, available to purchase individually or as a set. See the full list...10

The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Gogol

Simply, “The Nose” is a master class in voice. A man chasing his runaway honker around town trying to talk it back onto his face is, to me, perfection.

9

Gilead

Marilynne Robinson

If you’re only going to read one book this year about an aging Iowa pastor being quietly reflective, then this is the one for you! No one builds a sentence like Marilynne Robinson.

8

The Underground Railroad

Colson Whitehead

This goes on my short list of gigantical bestsellers that, when I read it way back in galleys, made me think, “This is going to be a gigantical bestseller—and truly deserves to be.” It’s just fantastically imagined and extraordinarily powerful.

Portrait of an Addict As a Young Man

Modern Nature

Grand lists is a curated arts site specializing in books and movies selected by 100 public figures and celebrities, ranging from designers, musicians, artists, actors, performers and directors, to politicians, novelists, scientists and athletes.